


Dead World

by joojoobe



Category: NCT (Band), SM Rookies
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Assassins & Hitmen, Death, F/M, Limbo, M/M, Paranormal, WTF, angsty af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8056789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joojoobe/pseuds/joojoobe
Summary: A young woman is murdered, and wakes up the next moment in a world called Ephemera, the space between life and the afterlife where souls with unfinished business languish until they can resolve the circumstances of their death.  It's called limbo, and it's crueler than life





	1. We're All Dead Here

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is an older NCT story I wrote that I've decided to go back and edit/ add more to. I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> xoxo  
> Joojoobe

        Before she died, Sol managed to drag herself under the quiver of sunlight filtering through the closed curtains of her window. The day was just giving into night, and this small amount of warmth afforded her little comfort as she cradled her stab wounds; two deep gashes to her belly, one shallow cut at the bridge of her nose, and one half-hearted puncture where her collarbone dipped. The pattern of her wounds gave away the precise moment when her assailant’s fury yielded to reason, when he realized the magnitude of what his hands were doing.

            The iron smell of blood dizzied her, and distantly she probed at the deepest wound in her stomach. She felt splintered bone and viscera pulsing. She wanted to heave but couldn’t. Even retching would take too much energy. Her attacker had ruined her beyond even hope for survival, carving her body with the same hands that used to reach for her at night, run through her hair, stroke her cheek. After it all, he had the sense of mind to wash evidence off of himself, change into a new set of clothes. He even locked the door behind him, as if the possibility of robbery could hold a candle to what had just transpired. Sol never dreamed she would be a part of this statistic: just another person murdered by an ex-lover. It was almost stereotypical, really. By the time her little brother Jaemin came home to find her on the floor, she was too far gone to register the horror of his voice, and when he shook her cooling body, nothing hurt anymore. Night was approaching, there was no more sunlight streaming through the curtains. She died curled up on herself like an embryo, and woke the same way in the next world.

 

~

 

            The streets of the world of Ephemera were as grimy as ever, but today, it was merely with dirty water rather than blood, so Ten could hardly find it in himself to complain. Doyoung seemed to have reached the same conclusion as he ran ahead, whistling to himself, splashing around a bit in the filthy brown water as if he were a child wading in a pond.

            “Stop splashing, Doyoung. If you get that dirty ass water in your boot, I swear you’re going to get an infection.” Ten called to his friend. A keening scream came from one of the houses, but it barely registered to either of the boys. Their world was full of whimpers and cries.

            “Don’t be a stickler, Ten. Disease doesn’t exist here. We’re already dead.” Doyoung slowed to a trot and fell back besides Ten, putting a hand on his shoulder to hurry him along. “I’m not worried about a little grime. What I am worried about though, is the fact that we’ve only found four shards today. I swear, if we don’t beat Yuta’s number of shards today, I’ll never hear the end of it. Competitive bastard.”

            Ten smiled weakly, digging around in his pocket for the shards. They looked quite useless; more like bluntly broken pieces of rock than glassy shards, really. But Ten’s short time in Ephemera had taught him that these shards were the only thing that mattered in this limbo world. They were made of memories. But not their own.

            A bright light streaked across the red sky ahead and Doyoung yelped in joy.

            “There’s another passerby! It must have dropped at least a few shards. Let’s go forage!” he set off at a sprint and Ten had no choice but to follow. He knew what the shards meant. They were the only manner of currency this world had to offer: Ephemera, the world of limbo after death. Ten, like everyone else stuck here, was a “middler”: a soul that for whatever reason could not accept the circumstances of their deaths, enough so as to not be able to transition directly into the afterlife.  Whatever that was. Ten, like all the other middlers, had unfinished business back on earth. And these shards were the key to resolving that business and moving on More than anything, Ten wanted the luxury of a true afterlife: not this half-formed world that mirrored the suffering of living so closely it was, at times, undifferentiated.  His greatest fear was to expire in this half-life world of red skies and misery

            A dull white shard caught Ten’s attention against the backdrop of soot and concrete.

 

            “I found one” Ten called out, and he braced himself to pick the shard up, this shred of someone else’s memory. As his fingers brushed the shard, it suddenly yielded a pulse of warmth and Ten was abruptly transported elsewhere, seeing through eyes that were not his. It was unmistakably a summer day, a picnic blanket spread out before him. In one hand he held a beer, and in the other a sandwich. A small blond child was watching a monarch butterfly’s flight and giggling like a wind chime. Ten felt a foreign joy rush through his body. He opened his mouth to call out the child’s name in a voice much deeper than his own, and he opened his arms to receive her as she ran to him. The memory ended as abruptly as it came on, and the summer dematerialized into the ever glum, red horizon of Ephemera. Ten pocketed the shard, still woozy from the voyeuristic glimpse into someone else’s life.

          “Was it an alright one this time?” Doyoung asked, placing a bracing hand on Ten’s shoulder. It was a game of roulette when picking up shards. Sometimes the memories were benign, or cheerful, but other times the memories they held were positively nightmarish: a fight, a glimpse of violence, an assault.

          “This was a good one.” Ten smiled. “The man who owned this memory must have been very happy.”

          “Lucky bastard. Must be nice to have a good life and be able to pass straight through to the afterlife.” Doyoung said as they began walking towards the direction of the home that they shared with their friends.

          Ten couldn’t disagree. The shards were a product of the lucky souls who were able to bypass Ephemera and go straight into the afterlife. Often the journey caused some minor splintering to the souls, causing them to lose a few memories in the form of shards. These fell into the world of Ephemera, and the Middlers used them for all manners of things: commerce, but above all, the opportunity to re-enter the living world as a spirit for the chance to resolve whatever issue had caused them to land in limbo. Each shard allotted the Middlers an hour in the living world. Ten thought of how much they had managed to forage. Five shards today. Five hours to re-enter the living world as a spirit. It wasn’t very much time at all. And Ten needed so much time to resolve the mess his murder had left behind in the living world. The life of his still living best friend Taeyong was probably in dire danger, and unless Ten was able to save up enough shards to enter the living world to save him soon, he too would end up murdered. The thought of that alone was enough to make his hands go clammy.

          He’d been in Ephemera for three months now, and had been able to enter the living world a total of four times. Each time had been a frustrating failure. As a non-corporeal spirit, he was barely able to make a candle flame quiver. Taeyong never noticed his presence, not even a little bit. If Ten had still been a live, he would have grabbed his best friend and shook him by the shoulders and shouted “Stop going after the people who killed me, you idiot! You’ll get yourself murdered!” But Ten as helpless as a small gust of wind as a spirit, and he re-entered Ephemera each time a little more hopeless than before. If Taeyong ended up dead because of him, his guilt would keep him from passing into the afterlife. He would disintegrate into a malicious ghost and would be forced back into the world of the living as an evil spirit, haunting dark corners. Ten had seen this happen to enough Middlers in his time.

          A sudden flexing of light in the street before him pulled Ten away from his anxiety knotted thoughts.

         “Look. Ahead of us.” He pointed, and Doyoung picked up the pace.

          “Seems like yet another soul that is unable to pass into the afterlife.” He said as the flexing light re-calibrated, and in its place was a girl, curled up on herself with her knees to her chest. Doyoung knelt beside her and gently turned her onto her back. Her clothes were spattered with darkened blood, but as usual with the Middlers when they first arrived, her wounds were nowhere to be found.

          “Yikes. Looks like she died pretty violently.” Doyoung said, brushing some matted hair from her face. It almost struck Ten as funny that he would say that as most people who ended up in Ephemera died of unnatural causes, often times murder or war, an unexpected accident that left the souls with too many loose ends or grudges to pass through.

          The girl’s eyed began to stir, and she opened them slowly, chestnut brown still awash with unshed tears. Doyoung, ever softhearted, tried to give her a comforting smile that probably would mean less than nothing. She had died. They had all died, and still were deprived of the simple joy of a peaceful passage.

          “Hi” he said simply, as the girl focused first on his face, and then on Ten’s. One of her hands began to scrabble at her belly, and her eyes went wide when she found no wound there. She touched her throat next, and an astonished look crossed her face.

          “Is this the hospital?” She asked, her voice a study in disorientation. Ten recognized the tone well. He had wondered the same exact thing when he closed his eyes to six bullets piercing through his chest, only to wake up the next moment unwounded in a world where the skies churned red and rancid.

          “Unfortunately not.” Doyoung said, his voice sympathetic. “You died today. Can I offer you my condolences?”

          Most people cried at this news, but the girl didn’t. She merely pulled herself up, her eyes alight with disbelief, and for that, he felt a seed of respect for this stranger. Ten reached for one hand to pull her up, and Doyoung took the other. A bright light streaked the sky overhead, shedding memories, another life extinguished with nothing chaining it.  Such stupid, blessed bliss.

 

~

        It wasn’t the red sky that threw her off, but the strangeness of the streets. This new middle world was a study in everything grit: the tall buildings wrought with grime and missing bricks, stains that may have been wine or blood, pock marking every corner. But it wasn’t the grime that bothered Sol, far from it. She had worked in enough underserved communities in her time to know what dilapidation looked like. But there was a strangeness in this world, where the dirty city with sludge water in the creek would suddenly warp to show corpses being carted downstream. Sol would shout, rub her eyes raw until Ten or Doyoung would pull her arms back and tell her “You’ll be used to it. I swear, you’ll be used to it,” and when she opened her eyes again, the creek would be all fern and water willow, no blood, no bodies.

           “It’s only natural really.” Ten said as they walked along the water. Sol had been so wary of them for the first half hour or so because of how hardened they looked. Both were well armed with blades strapped to their hips. Even Doyoung who vaguely held the countenance of a bunny still had a hint of something potentially dangerous below the jovial surface. Still, Sol had chosen to trust them for now. What else could she do, suddenly stranded in a different world?

           “We are in limbo after all. That means unfinished business. That means untied ends. And those who died peacefully in their beds don’t tend to have those.” Ten absently drew an embellished knife from his hip. He polished as he walked, and Sol pretended not to be alarmed. For all of his boyish good looks, there was a bladed edge to Ten that was unmistakably frightening. “The physical world of Ephemera is built upon the Middlers’ collective memories. That’s why it’s so helplessly depressing here, because most Middlers died without proper resolution. We died full of resentment. In war. In murder. That’s also why Ephemera seems to morph so often right before your eyes. Because there are always new people entering or leaving, bringing their own memories that alter the cityscape. Be prepared for slums. And bombs. Lots of bombs. It’s hard to outrun trauma.”

           Sol wrapped her bloodied blouse around her shoulders, staring hard into the new world. Like Ten said, the scene was desolate and an absolute hodgepodge in terms of what it was depicting. Ephemera’s landscape and architecture seemed to span the whole world. The brownstones of New York, the sloping edifices of Asia, and then suddenly the sandy Gobi, or the unleavened landscape of a war torn country. At any given moment, the city of Ephemera would glitch like an old videogame and be restructured anew; new memories, new landscape. Yes, even briefly, Sol thought she saw the unmistakably blue hue of her apartment where she was murdered: the blood speckled fireplace, the Cherrywood floor. But even that quickly evaporated to another unfamiliar setting, and was gone. So many half-lives entering and leaving. So many competing memories erecting the landscape.

          “It’s so disorienting.” Sol said, trying to rub the dizzy out of her eyes. The ever-warping cityscape made her feel like she’d dropped a hallucinogen, she couldn’t focus. Could hardly comprehend what her eyes were seeing.

          “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.” Ten said, the European building to his left glitching into a colonial cottage from which a woman cursed from the attic window.  “Eventually as your soul’s connection to the living world fades, the glitches will barely register for you. Besides, once we get you back to our headquarters, the world will be a lot more stable. Our friends aren’t newbies, and don’t tend to influence the landscape with our memories anymore. With time, we’ve learned control.”

          Doyoung was almost infectious with his cheeriness. While Sol trudged behind, utterly devastated, he bounded ahead, grabbing Ten and Sol in turn to pull them forth. Sol was stunned by the differences in their countenance. If Doyoung was a summer day, Ten was night; serious and troubled. Still, neither seemed like bad people.

          “We’re home.” Doyoung said suddenly, and Sol looked up to what looked like a hovel on the verge of collapse. Not wanting to seem spoiled, she tried to hide her dismay, but must have done a bad job because Doyoung began to chuckle. “Come in, come in.” He said, ushering her through. The inside of the home was musty and just as dilapidated as the outside, but true to Doyoung’s word, the scene was much more stable in the home comparatively to outside. There was very little glitching, and for that at least, Sol could be thankful.

         The three of the Middlers made their way to the very back of the home and Ten suddenly shoved her hard into the unlit fireplace. Sol’s knees hit the ash, and just as she was about to panic, wondering if she’d made a mistake in following them blindly, she saw that  Ten was smiling knowingly at her.

            “Enjoy the ride.” He said, pulling a hidden lever underneath the soot. The bottom of the fireplace suddenly disappeared from under her, and she went shooting down a long shaft into the brightly lit facilities below.


	2. The Things that Tether Us

 

           “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Doyoung asked as the group got up and brushed themselves off.

          “A little warning would have been nice.” Sol said, but she was too distracted to be angry. Unlike the dank hovel of the ground level, this hidden underground section was all modern fortification. “Where are we?”

          “Our headquarters.” Ten said, taking off slowly down a long hallway. “It’s just a little something left behind by some poor soul whose last memories were inside a bomb shelter. That person successfully resolved his grudge and moved on to the afterlife. We just moved into the shelter erected from his memory and fortified it for extra safety.”

          “Extra safety? We’re already dead. What more could we need protection from?” Sol asked, and Doyoung and Ten both gave each other knowing looks.

           “Some souls never stop being dangerous, even after death.” Ten said. “We’ll explain everything in due time. For now, you should meet our teammates. They’ll be surprised to meet you. It isn’t often we bring a new soul down here. We need our headquarters to be secret, and our group to be small and tight.”

         “Then why are you bringing me?” Sol asked.

          “You didn’t fall all over yourself when you realized you’d died. That’s bravery. We could use that.” Ten said, an unmistakable tone of respect in his voice.

          “It’s perfect timing, really. We just lost one of our group.” Doyoung said.

            “You mean they were able to move on to the afterlife?” Sol asked.

          “No.” Ten replied, and Sol wanted desperately to ask what he meant by that, but the finality of his tone shut her up. They would tell her when they felt it was a good time, Sol was somehow sure of that.

           “This is the common area. I’m guessing most of our group should be back from recon work by now. Come” Doyoung opened a heavy double door, and lead Sol inside. The airiness of the common room was almost blinding on her eyes after the almost militaristic grey of the rest of the rest of headquarters. There was actual, plush white carpeting in this room, with a few comfortable pieces of furniture, even a television flickering in the corner. It wasn’t just livable, it seemed almost cheery. Sol was so taken aback by the niceness of the room, she didn’t notice any of the people in it until they called out.

          “Dragged in a straggler, did you?” A new voice called out, and Sol snapped to attention. A handsome young man with an impish grin was stalking towards them, almost cat-like in his graceful lope. A few strands of his messy brown hair fell over his eyes, but Sol could still distinctly see the scar there, long and thin like a knife wound.

          “Yes, we thought she might be a good teammate.” Doyoung said. “And don’t tease her too much Yuta, she’s new.”

         The man named Yuta gave her a mischievous look. “Is that right? How do you like our humble little world. Does it suit your lofty taste? No country clubs here,, I’m afraid.”

          Sol knew a challenge when she heard one. “Actually, this is leagues better than what I’m used to.”

          Yuta raised an eyebrow and the corner of his lip quivered into an unmistakable smile. “She’s got spunk.” He said, nodding. “But you can’t stay for nothing, little lady. You’ve got to earn your keeps.”

           “And how can I do that? I was a waitress when I was alive. Somehow I highly doubt that job exists here.”

           Yuta sat down on a couch, leaning back casually. Doyoung joined him immediately, yawning into a stretch. Sol and Ten sat opposite of them, and he started rummaging through his pockets. After a moment, Ten brought out five pieces of what looked to be stone.

          “Everything in Ephemera revolves around these. There is not one soul here that isn’t hunting them down”

           “Rocks?” Sol asked dully, and Yuta and Doyoung burst into laughter. Ten remained serious.

         “These are called shards. They’re memories.” He picked one up and observed it for a bit. “I’ve already seen these memories when I first picked them up. None of them were particularly bad today, so I’ll show you. Hold out your palm.” He said, and warily Sol did.

           As soon as the shard was placed in her hand, Sol suddenly found herself elsewhere. She was unmistakably an elderly woman, and a beautiful hillside hiking trail spanned before her. Her legs didn’t seem to be working very well, her steps were stiff and heavy, but Sol felt an odd peace filling her mind. The woman’s life was clearly nearing an end, but she felt no fear. An old dog with a white muzzle also toddled beside her. She understood he too had months left, tops. They would go together, she was sure of it. Death was extending a hand towards her, but she was happy, and the sun was so warm on the back of her neck…

           The scene suddenly disappeared and she was back in headquarters. Sol looked down at her hands. They were her own hands again, youthful and un-mottled. “What was that?” She asked, breathy in astonishment.

           “Like I said, memories. Not everyone who dies end up in Ephemera. Those that pass away without anything tethering them strongly to the living world can enter directly into the afterlife. But that passage is a long one, and sometimes causes some breakage to the souls. Nothing dramatic, just a few losses of memory. Those memories take the form of these shards, and they fall into Ephemera.”

         “That’s very cool and all, but they aren’t even our own memories. Why are they so important?” Sol asked, returning the shard to Ten who placed it on the table.

          “There are these beings called Gate Keepers. Creepy folk.” Yuta took over talking and Ten seemed relieved to rest his voice. “They manage the entrance between the living world and the afterlife. Part of their jobs are to return lost memories to their owners in the afterlife. They’ll pay you for any returned shards for time. Time in the living world, to be exact.”

           Sol felt her heart jump into her throat. “We can go back!”

           “Not in the way that you may hope. We can go back in spirit form. But it’s better than nothing. It’s a chance to resolve whatever loose ends caused you to end up in limbo. It’s a chance to vindicate yourself, and then move on to the afterlife.” Yuta leaned back. “No one in Ephemera know what exactly the afterlife entails. But we all want to go there. It must be hell of a lot better than here.”

           “So basically our one and only goal is to collect as many shards as possible so we can re-enter the living world to sever our ties with it?” Sol asked, her palms felt sweaty. She would have a chance to go back. To fix things.

           “That’s the gist of it, yes. We work as a team to gather shards, and we pool and split the yields. It’s also helpful to have a team because Ephemera is a dangerous world, and the souls in it will do anything to gather shards, even if it means attacking other souls and stealing them. Of course, we can’t die again, but we still can be injured and feel pain like we did in the living world. We watch each other’s backs. The rest, you’ll figure out on your own soon enough. I won’t talk your ear off about it.” Yuta said, and then curiosity seemed to get the better of him. “So what got you stuck in limbo, huh? Are you a jilted lover? Are you seeking revenge for something?

          Doyoung seemed aghast at Yuta’s bluntness, but Sol just shook her head. What was the point in hiding anything, if they were all supposed to work together now?

           “I was murdered.” She began slowly. The boys just nodded sympathetically, but none seemed surprised. For all Sol knew, they may all have been. “But I don’t think I’m here because I want revenge for it or anything. I don’t really care about what happened to me. I’m here because I’m worried for my brother.”

            “Why?” Doyoung asked, leaning forward.

            “He’s been struggling with depression since he was a kid. There were a few suicide attempts in the past. But he was on the upswing. He was getting better. But he was the one who found my body. I’m afraid his depression will get the better of him again because of my death. I can’t have him commit suicide because of me. I need to…”

            Sol felt a sudden burning in her throat and she struggled madly to keep the tears back. She had held it together for this long, but the thought of Jaemin left alone in his depressive state was too much to bear.

_I will not fall apart here. I will not fall apart._

           A sudden, gentle hand on her knee steadied her, and Sol held on to it like a door frame. Ten gave it a solid squeeze and let go.

           “You can’t pass on until you save him.” He completed her sentence with conviction, and she nodded.

            “Yes.”

           “It seems we have a lot in common.”

 

~

 

              The first few weeks after her death passed in a dizzying kaleidoscope of activity. Sol could hardly keep up with the sheer amount of training and learning she was being forced to do. Combat training seemed to take precedence over all, and she found herself in the training facility for a good six hours a day, deflecting hits, hurling knives, building up endurance. When she was alive, Sol had never been the athletic type, preferring quiet nights of reading and binge watching television over physical activity. It turned out even in death, she wasn’t able to shake her lack of athleticism.

            Doyoung was a pleasant trainer. He let her rest when she was winded, gave her plenty of water to quench her thirst, tried to joke around to make time pass quicker, and never hit her too hard during combat practice, apologizing profusely if he ever felt he did. Ten was a little more stern, but his harshness paled in comparison to Yuta who was an absolute tyrant.

            For all his boyish good looks, he was brutal. He hit her hard enough to knock her off her feet and break skin. When her throat parched and her entire body was begging for hydration, he wouldn’t let her drink.

            “Don’t be fooled by all of our supplies in Headquarters. What happens if you’re out on the field, and you have no access to running water? Get used to thirst. And hurt. As Middlers, we have the capacity to feel way more pain that in the living world because our bodies will not succumb to the injuries. The pain can just build and build indefinitely. You need to be strong.” He would say, dragging Sol to her feet. By the end of her training sessions with Yuta, Sol’s entire body ached and was bruised for days. But she couldn’t deny that she probably learned the fastest with him. Together they’d discovered that Sol had good aim with throwing knives, and could hold her own in a fight as long as the assailant didn’t get too close. It occurred to her that if she had known these skills when she was still living, she would have been able to prevent her own murder. If she had the skills she acquired after death while she was still alive, she may not have died in the first place. The irony of the fact did not elude her.

            “You should be ready for your first recon mission in the next few weeks. The number of shards we’ve been able to find have been dwindling, so we could use another hand sooner rather than later.” Yuta said, and Sol smiled in relief. She hadn’t stepped foot outside of the headquarters in about three weeks, and despite the fact that Ephemera was not a beautiful world, she still missed open air. Being underground for three straight weeks made Sol feel imprisoned and a little stir crazy. Yuta nodded, finally throwing her the much needed bottle of water. Sol tore it open and drank it all in one hurried swig. She’d never recognized water to have a taste, but after hours of deprivation, it tasted like sweet, sweet nectar. He chuckled at her voraciousness. “Isn’t it strange how much our existence in Ephemera mirrors the living world? Still thirst, still hunger, still pain. The only difference is that here, we can’t escape it by dying.”

            Sol wiped her mouth and stood up. “I didn’t want to escape anything. My life was great. I wanted to live.”

            Yuta gave her a long silent look, his expression utterly unreadable, and Sol suddenly realized that despite having spent the past three weeks training with him, she really knew nothing much about him except for what he allowed to live on his surface: his hard edges, his mischievous streak, his sometimes cruel jokes. She knew nothing about what he was like when he was living, the circumstances of his death, or what had caused him to end up tethered in Ephemera. Sol knew very little about most of the boys, in fact. But it occurred to her for the first time that flaunting the fact that she had lived happily until her murder might be its own brand of cruelty towards her teammates. For all she knew, they may have known nothing but misery until the very end.

 

            ~

            In Ephemera, it was never a great idea to venture out and about in solitude. There were always other Middlers lurking in the shadows, preparing to ambush one another for the mere possibility of stealing a shard. Ten knew this, but he still strapped his knives to his back, and shot himself up out of headquarters alone. He didn’t tell anyone he was going, but if someone had a problem with it when he returned, he figured he would just say he was nervous about how few shards they had been managing to find as of late. It was true, or course, but Ten also just really wanted to get out of headquarters alone for a bit, and clear his thoughts.

            As usual, the city looked a little different than it had when he’d last surfaced. There must have been some bombing in the living world that claimed many lives and caused some to snag in Ephemera, because the air smelled heavy with gasoline and blood. The city streets were embellished in a way that was entirely foreign to him, the architecture clearly belonging to that of a country he was not familiar with. Ten felt a heaviness in his heart as he walked through the city streets, the erupted buildings and the vestiges of what had unmistakably been a spice market. When he had been alive, he’d seen scenes like this in the news, certainly. But war had always felt so distant to him, and seeing the leveled cities and broken bodies through the filter of a TV screen never drove the enormity of war home to him. It was easy to forget about the violence erupting in distant parts of the world from his safe niche in Korea where he’d been living at the time. What did he know of bombs and sirens back then? But Ephemera taught him all that he knew now. It taught him what it meant to be a body in a war-scape. It taught him to bare his palms.

            Ten sighed, running his fingers through his unruly hair. He wasn’t sure what was better. To be trapped in an underground headquarters, or to be confronted with a scene like this. He tried to focus, scouring the ground for shards to take back. He found one, but feeling too troubled to want to see the memory it held, he wrapped it up in a cloth rather than picking it up with his bare hands. Pleased at his discovery, Ten continued on, continuing his hunt, but his mind inevitably drifted towards happier times, when he’d been alive and any possibility of danger felt like a movie playing in a distant room. He remembered running through the streets of Seoul with his roommate Taeyong, downing bottles of soju together at the nearest outdoor stall to celebrate a new conquest, or mourn being dumped. How strange, that it had only been four months since his death. It felt like years and years ago since he’d last seen Taeyong’s face or heard his laugh. Taeyong used to always imitate Ten’s accent while speaking Korean, and the two would collapse into fits of laughter that were silly, and empty, and wonderful. Ten wished that laughter was the last he remembered of his friend’s voice, but it was not.

            The day of his murder had come as no surprise to Ten. Some part of him had expected his life to come to this for a long time. There were only a few moments of blinding pain when the bullets hit his chest, and then almost as a means of survival his whole body went numb. He distantly heard his shooter exit the apartment, and all he could hear was his own pulse thudding in his ears, and the scream of the kettle he had placed on the stove to prepare tea. He placed his hand over one of the bullet holes, and his hands came away dark and ruddy, the undeniable blood of a vital organ, and he knew there was no saving himself. In that moment, Ten had been ready to go peacefully into the next world, but then he heard the door open again, and a terrible, terrible howling. It was Taeyong’s voice, but it sounded like an animal. He felt Tae’s knees hit the ground, his head suddenly cradled on his best friend’s knees. And then…

            Ten froze when the sudden sounds of gravel crunching under his boot pulled him away from his thoughts. In one swift motion, he unsheathed his knives as he turned and found himself surrounded by three burly men. Two were armed with small, dull looking knives, and one with what looked like a piece of a lead pipe. Ten mentally kicked himself for letting his thoughts distract him enough that he let these Middlers get so close.

            “Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I don’t have any shards on me.” A futile lie that Ten knew they wouldn’t believe.

            “We won’t know that until you empty your pockets.” The one with the pipe said, reaching towards him.  Like a whip, Ten ducked under his grasp, and swung his knife upwards, slicing through tendon. The man’s arm spit red and he cussed, falling back, but the two other men lunged forward. They were strong, but Ten’s lithe form was much quicker as he spun around their advances, making shallow swipes at their chest and arms, but never daring to get too close. If they managed to get a hold of him, he probably wouldn’t be able to break away, and he knew it. As Ten jumped out of the way of a blade, he swiveled back and caught one of his assailants across the throat. If this had been the living world, that wound would have been enough to kill, but in Ephemera, the man just sputtered, holding his neck and continued with his assault. The wound would heal itself on its own in a week or so. Ten knew this. But he still could never shake the vague feeling of guilt for injuring another so direly. Even if they had attacked him first.

            Wanting to fall back, Ten took a few steps backwards, and flung one of his knives directly into the chest of the only uninjured attacker and it hit. The man cried out and dropped to his knees, and Ten for a moment believed he had won, but he’d forgotten the one with the lead pipe that had hung back for so long in the fight. He’d forgotten until he felt the pipe connect hard with the back of his head. Bright white suddenly washed across his vision, and he hit the floor. The three men converged on him instantly, abandoning their weapons to kick him sharply in the ribs and back, but Ten refused to cry out. He didn’t want to give any satisfaction to these cowards who would jump someone three against one. Biting his lip, he felt himself on the verge of unconsciousness, and a wailing took up in his ears. It was Taeyong’s voice again. He heard his friend everywhere. Ten knew he didn’t exist in this world, but he felt his presence next to him.

           _I swear I’ll get the bastards who did this to you._ Taeyong’s voice, warped with tears. _I’ll get them. I’ll kill them all. Oh God, don’t go_

            Another kick and Ten felt blood drip into his mouth, tasted its iron. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t understand what was happening.

_Don’t leave me. Ten! Hang on._

            But he couldn’t. His consciousness was quickly fading. He was confused, and hurt. He reached out and grabbed the nearest pant leg he could find. It felt like he was being killed all over again, and that Taeyong was once again finding him riddled with bullets, but distantly, Ten knew that was not possible. But he’d never gotten to tell Taeyong what he’d needed to tell him. He’d died before he’d gotten the chance.

            “Don’t go after them, Tae.” He said, but the blood slicked his grip and he fell back to the ground.

            “Who is Tae? Your boyfriend, pretty boy?” The attacker’s derisive laughter suddenly gave away to shouting. A familiar voice ordering them to get back, and when they wouldn’t the ring of a knife being unsheathed.

            “Get away from him.” The voice said, and Ten couldn’t help but smile into the dirt because he knew who that voice belonged to.

            Hansol. Ten’s vision spun and he was plunged into darkness.


	3. The Living

 

~

The Living World

~

 

            For what felt like the hundredth time in four months, Taeyong found himself in the police station, frustration washing over him in hot waves at the officer’s dismissive stare.

            “What do you mean there are no new developments?” Taeyong asked, his voice cold and even, despite the fire of anger that threatened to swallow him like a pyre. “It’s been four months already since my friend was murdered, and you still have no person of interest? Not even a lead?”

            “Kid, for the millionth time, we’re doing all that we can.” The officer said, his voice a thin, bored drawl. “But there was just not that much evidence to go on.”

            “What about the fucking bullets? Can’t you guys trace the make or model of those, for Christ sakes?” Taeyong was gripping his hands into fists so tightly he knew his nail was biting into his palm. It had been four months. Four agonizing months since he’s found his roommate and best friend Ten close to death on their kitchen floor. He’d never forget the feeling of his body going cold in his grasp, nor would he forget the whirlwind of the hours after in which the police came, sirens screaming of murder. The police swathed their apartment in lengths of crime scene tape, muttering amongst themselves as Ten’s lifeless body was carted away in a bag as casually as a mannequin. But that had been his best friend in that bag. His very best friend.

            “We tried to trace the bullets back to the serial number of the gun, but we got no leads. The gun was most likely sourced from out of the country somewhere. And as your friend is the citizen of another country, there is very little we can actually do to investigate his death here. We can tell you this much though, this was not a random crime. This was a planned hit.” The officer sighed, clearly wanting to get Taeyong out of his station. “Kid. I understand grief well as I see it every day. You think you’re particular in your grief, and that holding onto anger will help solve the case. It won’t. Do yourself a favor and try to move on.”

            Taeyong opened his mouth to retort, but the officer held up a hand, silencing him with finality.

            “You think your bond with your loved one is something special. You think you’re special in your loyalty, but you’re not. People don’t work this way. They adapt.  If you try to move on, eventually you will. You’ll learn to live without needing revenge.” He swiveled his chair around. A clear dismissal. Taeyong felt the rage threatening to bubble out in the form of an almighty tantrum, but he refused to dignify this uncaring bastard with a show of emotion. He turned and stormed out of the office and the station. He should have known than to try again. The police had done less than nothing to solve Ten’s murder. Just because Ten was not a Korean national, and only was there on a four year student visa, they treated his death as a tertiary priority at best. It filled Taeyong with rage.

            The cold Seoul air struck him like a whip as he stalked down the street. He wasn’t dressed for the winter weather: no gloves, no scarves. But the cold felt good against his skin, especially after his fruitless hour at the police station that left him feeling like a heap of smoldering coal. Taeyong breathed out slowly, watching his breath catch in the air in cottony wisps. It had been the end of summer when Ten was murdered. It was hard to believe that it was already winter now. Winter, and still no closer to justice.

            He slowed his pace as he passed an outdoor food tent. He could hear the din of voices coming from inside, and the stomach churning smells of grilling meat and fried dough. This was the particular stall that he and Ten would often frequent to drown their sorrows in booze and fried foods. Feeling somehow pulled, Taeyong headed inside, the steam and warmth enveloping him as he made his way to the table they usually claimed. He ordered a plate of vegetable skewers and a bottle of soju, having to fight the urge to ask for two shot glasses instead of one.  How hard it was to quell these habits. How huge the presence of an extinguished life.

            When the food came, Taeyong found that his appetite had only really been for booze. After a few halfhearted nibbles of the vegetable skewers, he pushed the paper plate aside and began to sip at the soju, the familiar bite of the rice liquor foul and comforting in equal measures. Ten had been a cheap drunk. A few gulps of soju enough to bring red to the apples of his cheeks. He had had the habit of imbibing way past his tolerance though, and Taeyong usually had to drag him out of the food tent before Ten started sloppily trying to sing a song or hit on someone in his drunken stupor. The memory brought a small smile to his lips, and he threw back another shot. The buzz was coming on, numbing and pleasant, but behind it was a grim determination.

            His best friend would not go on forever unavenged. As Ten died in his arms, Taeyong had promised him that he would find his murderer and give him what he deserved. If the police would do nothing, Taeyong would not be idle. No matter what the cost, he would find the bastard that murdered Ten. And with his own hands, he would kill him.

 

~

 

            Jung Jaehyun, for the most part, could not complain about his life. He had been accepted into a top University and was studying literature, a subject he loved under the tutelage of the nation’s top scholars. Though he himself was too shy to admit it, he was also fortunate in the looks department. With his princely charms and stature, he never had any shortage of girls and even some guys flocking after him. His life, for the most part, was a study in perfection. Except for one, vital thing: his stupid eyes could see too much.

            Despite all of his fortunes in life, Jaehyun had the grave misfortune of being able to see the dead world. He couldn’t think of a worse curse. Jaehyun sighed into his cup of coffee. He had been in the library for hours trying to brush up on Cold War era literature, but how was he supposed to focus on his studies when there were all these spirits around? The usual ghosts that haunted this particular library, Jaehyun was used to. The ghost of a student that once pitched herself off the third floor balcony was in her usual alcove, sporadically knocking books off the shelves and spooking living students, and the Ghost of a 16th century woman whose old grave had been displaced in the building of the library was crying in the corner over where Jaehyun assumed her body used to rest.

            But there was a difference between ghosts and spirits. Jaehyun wasn’t entirely sure why, but Ghosts were permanent fixtures, seemingly unable to stray more than a few feet from wherever they were haunting. And they usually had a dark gray aura around them, and eyes that were tinged red; an obviously malevolent, unnegotiable force. But spirits were different. They seemed to be able to move around the living world as they pleased, and they looked like any living person, only faded and vaguely translucent. Jaehyun had no idea what caused spirits to want to wander around the living world, but their presence was bothersome and distracting to him, especially when they kept him from concentrating on his studies.

            Today, a spirit he had never seen before was lingering around the Korean War section of the library. The spirit was young, probably no older in appearance than twenty two years old, but there was a seriousness to his handsome features that made him seem older in countenance. The spirit tried to pull a volume down from one of the shelves, but his translucent body could do little more than cause the book to rock back and forth for a short measure of time. Jaehyun took another swig of his coffee as the spirit tried again to pull the book down, and slowly, slowly It started to move off the shelf before finally falling to the floor. It fell with a loud thump, and a student who had been sitting nearby yelped, staring wide eyed towards the book that to her, seemed to have fallen off the shelf of its own volition. After a moment of wide eyed staring, she quickly gathered her things and left. Jaehyun tried to quell his laughter, but a small, knowing smirk had already jumped to his lips. Despite the terrible curse of being able to see the non-living beings, moments like this never failed to amuse him.

            Jaehyun closed his books. There was no way he was going to get any work done in the library today with all the paranormal activity going on. His apartment was free of spirits and ghosts, so he would continue his research there. As he was about to leave, he looked up once more towards the spirit in the Korean War section, and his heart jumped to his throat.

            The spirit was looking right at him, locking eyes. Jaehyun felt a cold panic spread through his body. Usually he was very careful to never allow any spirits or ghosts be aware  that he could see them. Since childhood, he had trained himself to seem like any normal person because some part of him always knew that if anyone including spirits knew what he could see, It would open up a new world of problems for him. Problems he had no intent on entangling himself up with. How could he have been so foolish to let the spirit notice his awareness?

            The handsome young spirit was walking towards him now with an air of purpose. Unlike lots of people his age who fell all over themselves speculating on the supernatural world, Jaehyun had no interest in being involved with the paranormal. He would figure out all of its mysteries after he died. Until then, he was only interested in what the living do. He turned his back on the spirit that was coming towards him, and fled.

 

 

~

Ephemera

~

            Hansol hadn’t seen Yuta this angry in a long time, and that was saying a lot. He paced around the infirmary, his boyishly handsome face contorted under a mask of rage. He paused a few times to take in Ten’s bloodied and bruised body, his expression registering a moment of sadness before reverting back to anger.

            “Ten knows it’s dangerous to go outside alone! Why wouldn’t he ask me to come with him if he really wants to go looking for shards?” Yuta said, his face flushed.

            “Calm your emotions Yuta, it’s disrupting the equilibrium.” Hansol said evenly. Yuta’s rage was causing the scene around them to glitch and alter. For a moment, the clean white walls of the headquarters bent under Yuta’s emotions and momentarily seemed spattered in grime and blood, then back again to pristine white. Then again, it glitched into what looked like a run-down apartment, littered with beer cans , then back again to the infirmary walls.

            “And those fucking bastards who jumped him. Who jumps a guy outnumbered three to one? Those cowards. What did they look like? I’m going to beat them until they wish they can die again.” His hands were clenched into fists, and shaking.

Hansol had seen Yuta lose control enough to know that if he didn’t calm himself soon, his emotions would alter their surroundings to mirror his worst memories. Hansol didn’t want to see it again, the way Yuta died. He sprang into action, putting a soothing hand on the younger Middler’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Just breathe.” He rubbed circles into Yuta’s back until he felt the tremors stop. The scene slowly calibrated back to normal, and their surroundings returned to the pristine infirmary. Yuta slowly unclenched his fists and moved backwards, away from Hansol’s grasp.

                 “I’m sorry.” Yuta said. “I did it again didn’t I?”

                   “I won’t fault you for being angry at what happened to Ten. It shows that you’re a loyal friend.” Hansol smiled, and brushed some hair away from Ten’s unconscious face. He had washed away the blood, and bandaged his wounds, but it was clear that Ten had many broken bones and maybe a ruptured organ. Even so, injuries healed quick in Ephemera. “Ten will be up and about in a couple weeks. But I doubt he’ll want you to go looking for trouble in the meantime, so try to quell your anger.”

Yuta nodded, sitting down besides Ten’s bed. “How was your trip back to the living world? Did you manage to discover anything?”

                 An uncharacteristically wide smile broke across Hansol’s face. Upon arriving back to Ephemera, he had been so caught up in saving Ten from those thugs that he had forgotten about the vital event that happened during his foray into the living world.

               “What are you so pleased about?” Yuta asked, curiosity coloring his voice.

               “I came across someone who could see me, Yuta. I’m certain he was able to see me. When we gather enough shards to re-enter the living world, we will find him. And we will get him to help us."

  Yuta couldn’t believe his ears. He continued to gawk at Hansol whose face remained infuriatingly even. After a long moment, Yuta finally managed to sputter a question; one of too many to aptly articulate.

            “A living person saw you? Are you sure you weren’t just looking at another spirit?” He asked, utterly incredulous.

            “ I know how to differentiate between the living and the dead, Yuta. He was alive and well, and staring right at me. When I started walking towards him, he panicked and took off running. I don’t know what other proof I would need.” Hansol said as he dabbed at one of the cuts on Ten’s lip that just wouldn’t stop weeping blood. “I’ve heard that there were some people in the living world who can see and interact with the dead. Not only can they see ghosts, many ungifted people can. But they can even see us spirits. Most of us middlers spend years trying to find them, but they keep themselves well hidden. This boy though, slipped up. I remember his face. I’ll find him again and get him to help us. Make no mistake of that.”

            Yuta fell victim to a foreign, genuine laughter. Hansol had been in Ephemera so long, he usually seemed so bleak at the prospects of resolving the issue that kept him in limbo. It had been a long time since Yuta had seen Hansol’s face light up with hope. He was glad to see such uncharacteristic optimism on his oldest friend’s face.

            “You better not think I won’t go with you. I have about enough shards to buy me a day in the living world. I want to see this whelp with the vision with my own two eyes.”

            Hansol tossed the cotton swab into the trash and unspooled a new length of gauze to rewrap Ten’s sodden bandages. “Of course. I know I can never shake you for long, persistent little mayfly that you are.”

            A sudden knock on the door knocked Yuta’s retort out of his mouth. The door flew open to a very concerned looking Doyoung, Sol trailing close behind looking dazed.

            “How is he doing?” Doyoung asked, coming around the table to loom over his unconscious friend’s face.

            “He’s been out cold, but he should be up and about again in a few weeks. Nothing you need to be too concerned about.” Hansol said before glancing behind Doyoung to the slightly confused looking woman behind him.  “And who is this?”

            Sol startled and fumbled her stiff back into a bow. “I’m Sol. I’m…. new.”

            Hansol just gave a nod, but made no move to introduce himself, looking away almost immediately, as though she were hardly enough to hold his attention. Not impolite, just distant. Sol swallowed her pride, and tried to return the same countenance, shuffling closer to Doyoung’s familiarly warm presence. 

            “So until Ten is back up, we’re one man down in terms of looking for shards huh?” He said. Hansol nodded, but a slow, mischievous smile was spreading across Yuta’s face.

            “No we’re not.” He said, nodding towards Sol.

            Doyoung shook his head immediately. “No way, Sol’s not ready. Three weeks of combat training isn’t enough. She’ll be more of a liability than anything.”

            “What’s the worst that can happen? Not like she’ll die. If she gets pummeled, you just bring her back here and we patch her up.” Yuta said, waving away Doyoung’s dissent.

            A faint buzzing had taken up somewhere in Sol’s head. A nameless, formless anxiety that mounted and mounted. Though she was thoroughly addled by having stayed underground for three straight weeks, the small snippets of Ephemera outside of headquarters was enough to strike dread into her marrow. The red skies that pulsed like a wound, the landscape that flickered and morphed before her eyes like a malfunctioning projector screen. It was horrid. It was horrid, and yet she was sure she hadn’t seen the half of it. Even Ten, one of her tougher trainers had been beaten this badly, to the point of broken bones and a fractured skull. It seemed inevitable that she too, would end up swaddled on the infirmary bed. And yet…

            Jaemin’s face suddenly swam into her vision. Her beloved little brother with his baby face and large toothed smile. Had it really only been three weeks since she’d last seen him? He’d wanted her to come to his soccer game, and unsure if she’d be able to get the day off work, she’d only told him that she would try. If she’d known that that conversation would have been the last, she would have promised him not only her presence. She would have promised banners and trumpets and celebration cake. Now he was in the living world without her.  The beast of depression they thought he’d overcome undoubtedly rearing its head at Sol’s death. Jaemin had always been a sensitive child, prone to depressive bouts that sometimes lead him to attempts on his life. But he had been getting better. So much better. At least until her death. Now, Sol imagined him curled up on her bed, trying to breathe in the last of her comforting sandalwood scent before even that vanished into the mouth of time. Her imagination was cruel. It was cruel because she knew it was accurate.

            “Arguing amongst yourselves will solve little.” A voice broke clear over her churning thoughts. The man named Hansol appraised her solemnly, and Sol realized her face must have been giving away a great deal of hurt. “This is your choice, Sol. Are you afraid? Do you need more time to train?” There was no trace of derision in his voice.

            “No. I’ll go up immediately.” She said, and she swore she saw a flicker of approval in Hansol’s eyes. The first sign of anything other than polite disinterest.

            Her brother was likely teetering on the edge of hurting himself. Irrevocably hurting himself. Sol needed to gather shards and enter the living world. She needed to help him, and quickly. It was becoming clear to her: time was a luxury only afforded to the living.


	4. Carrion

    In Ephemera too, there were buzzards, circling the red sky for carrion. One screeched overhead, falling like a heavy bullet onto something or someone lying prone in the road far ahead. Sol looked away. She had no interest in knowing what the giant bird was plucking at.

            Doyoung, noting her discomfort, wrapped his shawl tightly around her shoulders. It emulated the feeling of being held. Just the comfort she desperately craved. 

            “I thought buzzards only prey on dead bodies.” Sol said, trying to readjust the blades strapped to her sides. One of the hilts kept digging into her rib as if reminding her to be on the ready.

            “In the living world, sure. But in Ephemera, an unconscious body will do just as well. It’s actually quite the problem here. Occasionally, some lone Middlers get stranded and fall unconscious outside, and the carrion birds come…pick at them. Of course, they don’t die again, but the wounds never really heal completely. The outcome can be quite… grotesque.  It’s one of the main reasons why we try to never go out alone.”

            The bird’s wild flapping halted for just long enough for Sol to make out the unmistakable shape of a human body. A icy tundra was spreading down her arms, but Doyoung remained calm, striding forward slowly but without fear. Sol had been told to imagine the worst, and expect even worse than that. She had thought she was ready, but this fear… it was undeniable. She wanted to smack herself silly for this cowardice.

            Doyoung looked over his shoulder as if sensing her turmoil. “I want to search the body to see if he’s carrying any shards, but you’re welcome to stand back and wait for me if you’re afraid.” He said.

            “You mean you’re going to steal?” Sol said, aghast. Doyoung was the last team member she expected to be capable of this. Yuta had frightening streaks, Ten was quietly dangerous, and Hansol was a bit of a question mark. But sweet faced, cheerful Doyoung?

            He chuckled, taking gentle hold of her wrist and pulling her forward to fall into stride with him. “I prefer to call it borrowing. But trust that it’s either me or someone else. The poor bastard is going to wake up with empty pockets either way. This is just how it is in Ephemera.”

            “I’m going to do it with you then.” Sol said, determined to not balk in the face of violence. “I want to help. And if this is just how it is in Ephemera, It’s probably better that I get used to all the horror now.”

            Doyoung gave her a kind, playful smile. “Sure, but if you decide to lecture me again about morality, I might have to knock you out too and leave you for the birds.”

            Sol rolled her eyes, but could no longer find it in herself to judge him. If stealing from a stranger might bring her a step closer to being able to help Jaemin, she knew she would do it gladly. With a smile on her face.

            This realization of her own capacity for brutality frightened her, and in herself she suddenly saw a vivid reflection of Yuta. Her sometimes fiercely loyal, sometimes borderline deadly teammate. Perhaps, he too was not always as full of poison as he was now. Maybe this was just one of the possible side effects of life in limbo.

            “I wish he would confide in me.” Sol sighed, accidentally out loud.

            “What?” Doyoung asked, looking surprised. “Who?”

            Sol scrambled for answers. Yuta, sure she was curious about. But how much did she know about anyone really? Even Doyoung who regularly showed her the most kindness of everyone in this world was tight lipped about what his life had been when he was living, or what had kept him from transitioning straight into the afterlife.

            “I said I wish you would confide in me.” Sol said, a half-truth. But a truth nonetheless.

            “Why?” Doyoung asked, his head propped to the side. He truly looked like a bunny, wide eyed and trusting.

            “We’ve all been living together for three weeks now, and I know close to nothing about you, Yuta, or Ten. And I only just met Hansol and he already seems disinclined to talk to me. I wonder if it’s because I seem untrustworthy…”

            Doyoung cut her off. “It’s not that. It’s just that you’ve arrived in Ephemera so recently. You’re going through enough, there is no need to inundate you with depressing stories when you so clearly have a lot on your mind. That’s all. But you’re our teammate. And you’ll learn all that you want to know in due time.”

            Sol nodded, her eyes trained to the tufts of dirt her feet kicked up. Ephemera was sweltering today, almost desert-like, and the inside of her throat felt cottoned and blistering. Still, Doyoung’s words were a cool comfort.

            “And don’t mind Hansol. He’s not being cold because he dislikes you. He’s just over it all. He’s been in Ephemera for so long, he’s seen tons of Middlers come and go, and to him, it’s just not worth it getting chummy if they’re just going to leave.”

            “How is it possible that Hansol has been here for that long? How old was he when he died, because he looks no older than maybe twenty four.”

            Doyoung smiled softly. “He died when he was twenty two. But he’s been here for nearly eighty years. He’s a Korean War era spirit.”

            Sol’s jaw hung open. “That’s possible?!”

            “Of course it is. During the war, Hansol was separated from his lover, and died in a siege shortly after. He must have really loved that person, because his spirit couldn’t move on until he knew what had become of her, whether she lived or died. He’s been trying to search Korean war records and grave monuments to find her name, everywhere. But he can’t find any trace of her. So he’s still tethered here, still searching. But his time is running out.”

            Sol suddenly felt her heart aching for the teammate that had felt so distant.  How strong he was, to have lived through such horror, but still be preoccupied with matters of love. “What do you mean?”

            “A middler can’t be stuck in Ephemera forever. We also have a timeline. We can only exist in limbo for as long as people remember us. People we personally knew, that is. In Hansol’s case, his generation is beginning to die out. He has maybe ten or so relations who are still alive and have him in their memories. Once they are all deceased, Hansol won’t be able to stay in Ephemera any longer. He’ll have failed. We middlers only have two possible outcomes.  We either resolve whatever issue kept us from moving on and are allowed to enter the afterlife, or we fail or our time runs out and we fall into demonism.”

            A cold chill spread through Sol’s body. “Demonism?”

            “That is when our spirit succumbs to evil and grudge. After a few days of deterioration, the spirit becomes a ghost and is hurtled back into the living world. Permanently. To haunt it. To do horrible things, mindlessly, parasitically. Forever.”

            “You’ve seen this happen?” Sol asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The buzzard was growing closer, as was the body lying still beneath it.

            “Many times.” Doyoung answered, just as quietly. “It’s the most horrible thing in the world to behold. And Hansol doesn’t have much time before he succumbs to it.”

            Doyoung reached for Sol’s hand and gave it one comforting squeeze before letting go.

            “But I don’t need you to be worrying about that right now. There is a much more present horror that needs to be dealt with.”

            The carrion bird turned its bald head at their approach, and screeched with it’s red rimmed beak, it’s talons trunk-like and gored. Doyoung pulled out his long blade and swiped at the bird threateningly. It flapped backwards, off the body, and like a true scavenger, took to the sky to avoid a fight. It still circled overhead, wanting a chance to return to its meal, and it’s cries felt harsh enough to shatter ozone.

            But the bird was the least of her worries. The body…. The unspeakable state of the  body at her feet.

            Sol turned, and retched. She couldn’t help it. The heat of the atmosphere tinged the air with the tang of rotting flesh, but the worst of it was the sight. The clothes clinging to the body were mere tatters, and the skin too was mangled beyond repair, torn away in obvious strips. In the deepest of the beak gouges, Sol could make out viscera, visible, inexplicably still pulsing. Most of the cheek had been gnawed away to expose the teeth and gums, a permanent wide mouthed smile. Unlike Ten’s broken bones and superficial cuts and scrapes, this man’s injuries were beyond repair. He was all tendon and exposed muscle. No amount of time in any infirmary would bring back the gouged out flesh.

            _I can’t believe. I can’t believe this won’t kill him. That he’ll continue to exist this way._

            She retched again, or tried to. Neither she or Doyoung had eaten anything before leaving headquarters, and what little she could throw up was water and stomach acid. Her eyes watered over at the burning in her throat.

            Doyoung placed a warm hand on the back of her neck, massaging in slow circles. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” He repeated in a low voice as he eyed the body before them. He knew what he had to do next, but that didn’t mean he didn’t dread it. Slowly he inched forward and reached into the man’s left pocket. The inside was wet with sweat and blood, but otherwise empty.

            “Poor bastard. How did you end up out here alone?” Doyoung asked, but immediately remembered that Ten had also ventured out alone. This could very well have been the fate of his friend if Hansol had not found him and brought him back. Not everyone was as lucky as they were. Not everyone could fall, certain that someone was coming to rescue them.

            He reached over to search the other pocket, and felt around. Some odd bits and old coins, and there! His finger grazed over the smooth surface of a shard, and Doyoung was instantly catapulted into the memory it held. To his profound relief, it was a pleasant one. He was a woman on a beach. A beach! He hadn’t seen the ocean in so long. He was barefoot and walking through the currents, the foam pleating along the wet sand. It smelled so distinctly of salt and brine, and the familiarity of it all fogged his eyes with happy tears. Then abruptly, the ocean dissolved, and he was himself again, hands deep in the pocket of a gored man who would cruelly have to rise eventually. Sol still sounded like she was trying to cough her lungs out behind him. Poor girl. Doyoung was no stranger to that feeling. He too had gotten sick the first time he was confronted with such violence. Yuta had laughed at him derisively back then, but Doyoung was determined to make her feel better.

            “Mission accomplished.” He said, as he bent down towards her and wrapped her clammy fingers around the shard. He saw her eyes glaze over as she was inundated with the ocean memory, and he was glad to be able to give her at least a brief moment of escapism. The man at his feet began to stir, an animal moaning beginning to build in his throat. Doyoung knew he would soon wake, for better or for worse, and he didn’t want to be around to see it. He pulled one of her arms over his shoulder, and lead her away from the mangled body. She remained heavy as she viewed the memory, but soon her grasp became firm and he knew the shard had finished showing what it held. Doyoung pretended he couldn’t still smell the steel scent of a ruined body, and when Sol’s heavy breaths became sobs, he pretended not to notice that either.

 

~

  Yuta secured his slicked hands in gauze before gripping the hilt of his short blade. His hands were bleeding, and he figured Sol’s must have been too, but somehow he knew she wouldn’t want coddling now. Especially from him, who she seemed to have designated to be her sole trainer. Even though Ten had since woken up from his coma, Sol had sought out Yuta, and he knew why. Doyoung and Ten were too kind, and he was the only one willing to be truly ruthless.

            “Are you coming at me, or not?” She asked, her voice wrapped in a layer of venom, and Yuta couldn’t help but smirk. How strange it was, to be spoken to with the same casual cruelty he usually flung at others, as test or true derision. Yuta lashed out like a snake and met her blade with his own. She did not balk at his force. Though her feet slid back a few inches, she did not lose her footing. Since Sol’s first foray outside headquarters, she had come back an utterly changed woman. What she saw or experienced outside, Yuta didn’t know. He didn’t care to ask. But he was undoubtedly enjoying this rekindled fire in his newest teammate. He’d always figured her to simply be some pampered little girl with a big mouth, but now she was finally acting in a manner he understood: with ferocity and dogged determination.

            It had been two weeks since her first mission, and Sol had been pestering him relentlessly to train her in any way he could: hand to hand, weapons, she even wanted to know how to shoot, though guns were an uncommon find in Ephemera, and were stockpiled in case of true emergency. She was coming along marvelously. Gone was the sedentary city girl who couldn’t fight for thirty minutes before collapsing or complaining. Gone was the girl who begged for water before breaking a sweat. She was keeping pace with him, meeting his hits with her own. And though she was certainly worse for wear, her face and arms riddled with cuts and bruises, she was still standing. She still wanted to be strong.

            Yuta parried her swipe, grabbed her arm, unceremoniously tossing her down to the ground. She landed with a loud clatter, her chin hitting the concrete, and her blade fell away from her grasp. Vaguely triumphant, Yuta tapped her on the ear with the dull side of his blade.

            “And like this, you’d be buzzard food. What did I say about never letting the opponent get too close?” Sol grumbled and pushed him away irately, but he did notice the ghost of a smile pulling at the sides of her lips. She was gutsy. He had to give her that.

            “You did well. We’ve been at it for hours. I think that’s enough training for today.” Yuta turned, pulling a towel from a shelf. “Besides, both of our hands are fucked up.” He unraveled the gauze from his hands to show her the skin that had ruptured from holding on too tightly to the handle of the blade. Gently, he took her own hands in his, upturning them to show her the rawness of her own palms. She had been so immersed in her training, she looked genuinely surprised at her state. Yuta smirked, pulling her towards the sink. Without warning he grabbed a bottle of antisceptic and poured it over her open wounds. She hissed as the alcohol hit her cut up palms, the pain momentarily blinding her and sending her knees trembling. She desperately wanted to stamp on his feet for not giving her proper warning, but seeing as how he still had her injured hand at his mercy, she decided to let it go.  He propped her up against his shoulders as he gingerly dabbed her hands dry, cussing when he found splinters caught in the wetness of her open flesh.  Unceremoniously, he dug at the wounds with his fingertips to retrieve them, and this time Sol couldn’t resist her violent urges. She yelped, and stomped hard on Yuta’s foot, which didn’t seem to hurt him so much as cause him to dig the splinters out less gently. She squirmed, but one of his arms had snaked around her waist, firmly propping her against him.

            “That hurts, you asshole!” she kicked his shin, again to little gain.

            “If the splinter stays under your skin, it’ll irritate you when you grip your blade. Trust me” Yuta said, a faintly entertained note in his voice. Sol felt the first heat of genuine frustration in her cheeks.

            “Alright, I trust you, let me do it myself!” She turned towards him… and froze. While distracted from the pain, she hadn’t noticed how closely he was holding her, her entire weight propped on his shoulders, her injured hand splayed open over one of his. Heat crept up her neck. Their faces were close enough for her to see the rather deep scar running across his left eye, a scar that was normally hidden under a curtain of dark hair, which was now swept back behind his brow with sweat and a little blood.

            It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t been this close to another body in a month. The last time had been right before she died, her ex-boyfriend, and that had not been with consent… and right after that he had…

            A furious rushing sound filled her ears, and the air suddenly stuck in her throat, as if her wind pipe had been punctured with a hot knife. She heard shouting, that goddamned, hideous voice that once swore up and down he would love her forever, was now calling her Bitch, how dare you try to leave me you fucking little—

            She closed her eyes, felt herself falling to the ground, and when she opened them again, all she saw was him: her former lover, her murderer, looming above her with the kitchen knife in his hand, glinting white hot in the fluorescent glow. It couldn’t be. Sol knew it was impossible, but when he plunged down to inflict that first stab to her stomach, she felt it. The entirety of the blade running in and out with a force only made possible through fury. A rib caved, she heard it crack, and an inhuman scream rose in her throat and mounted and mounted without release because she couldn’t cry out. Her throat was punctured, a red dawn seeping through the wound in sticky rivulets, spattering the carpet with cerise, and she could only whimper.

            She curled onto herself as her surroundings began to flex and waver as if seen through a great desert heat. The voice of her murderer was beginning to morph into another. Someone was shaking her arm firmly, then pulling her onto their lap, stroking her hair back. She tried to draw breath, and found that she could. There was no wound to her throat, no blood,  and suddenly she was back in headquarters again, drenched in sweat and staring up at a very familiar set of eyes.

            “Yuta?” Sol sputtered, her voice raw and chafed.

            His expression looked shaken, but he still managed an impish grin. “Oh, is that my name? I thought for a second you thought my name was ‘fuck you’”

            “What happened?” She asked, noticing her surroundings still flickered a bit as she sat up.

            “It’s called PTSD, honey. Not even the dead can escape it.” Yuta said, running an anxious hand through his hair. In the chaos, he hadn’t had a chance to bandage his own chafed hands, and his whole outfit was streaked red because of it.

            “I’m sorry.” Sol said slowly, looking at her palms. She had never been one to suffer from any sort of anxiety while she was living. She’d never experienced anything similar to the attack she’d had just now. Not even close.

            “You don’t have to be sorry.” Yuta said, standing up to run his hand under the faucet. After a thoughtful moment, he turned the sink off. “I’m sorry. While you had your panic attack, your emotions altered our surroundings. It showed me glimpses of what happened to you. I’m sorry about how you died. About what that bastard did to you. I’m really sorry.”

            And he really did look sorry, for the first time in Sol’s recollection, something like genuine sympathy lived in his features. She had seen Yuta look at his other teammates with warmth, but never her. He offered her a hand, and she took it, standing up with his help.

            “We’ve really overdone it with training today. Let’s take it easy for the next few days. Maybe go look for a few shards. Besides, I think you are ready now.  You’ve become a lot tougher. You’re probably ready for your first foray into the living world. I’ll take you soon.”

            “Really?!” Sol asked, her heart jumping into her throat at the prospect of seeing her little brother.

            “Yes.” Yuta nodded, then after a moment of hesitation, he smiled. Not a smile of mischief, or mocking, but of genuine gladness. And she saw it, the healing smile of the gentle man he could have been.

            ~

 

            Ten always hated the feeling of entering through the gate to the living world. It always put into relief just how dim Ephemera was, the colors there less saturated and bright, a study of reds and browns. The living world, though he’d lived in it for twenty one years,  had begun to feel foreign with its blue skies, sun, and flashing, fluorescent advertisements. Ten squinted and faltered as his eyes adjusted to the sudden barrage of light and color. Hansol, ever the leader, paused to give Ten time to find his ground.

            “I always forget how gaudy the living world is.” Ten said as a man dressed as a soju bottle walked through him, passing out advertisements for a new bar that had opened around the corner.

            “Gaudy is a word for it, yes. This country has sure changed since my time.” Hansol said, his eyes appraising their surroundings. The two had come to the living world for one reason alone: to find the boy with the sight, and enlist his help; even if it be by force. They had only bought themselves about four hours, they needed to hurry. “I saw him in this university library here. I was looking for my love’s name in the Korean War casualty records, and he looked right at me.”

            Ten hurried to follow Hansol, and felt his heart drop. They were headed to the very university that he and Taeyong had attended before he died. Seoul University with its sloping, modern edifices and sprawling greenery. He’d missed this place. He’d missed this place and the friend who he used to sprint wildly with to make it to their class on time.

            “Are you coming?” Hansol asked, looking over his shoulder.

            “Yeah..” Ten hurriedly followed, looking through all the living faces that didn’t see him. Couldn’t see him. The dumb, happy faces made his heart swell simultaneously with warmth and hate. Did they realize what a blessing simply living was? Did they understand the mute joy of a life uninterrupted? He combed the faces that passed him for Taeyong, but of course, he couldn’t find him. Tae was probably in no state to come to school. Knowing him he had dropped out, hell bent on finding out who had killed Ten.

            Hansol stopped in front of a library. “In here.” He said, before simply walking through the door. Ten did the same, and Hansol promptly pulled him behind a bookshelf. “If the whelp is here, we can’t let him see us.”

            Ten nodded. He knew what Hansol was playing at. If they managed to secretly follow the boy to his home, they would be able to access his home straight out of the gate. It was the classic blackmail strategy of: Do what we want, we know where you live.

            “Well. I was banking on the hope that the boy is a creature of habit, and it looks like he is. He’s sitting at the same desk over there by the white statue.”

            Ten peered behind Hansol’s shoulder and saw him. He was an unusually handsome young man with a vaguely aristocratic charm about him. If Korea still had monarchs, Ten figured this boy would fit the bill as a prince. A small swarm of girls sat at the long table behind him, giggling and glancing his way, but he could not possibly look less interested. He didn’t even glance their way as he pored through his book, taking furious notes.

            “Now we just have to wait it out until the boy goes home. And then we follow him.” Hansol said, sitting and stretching his legs out in the aisle. Ten sat beside him, eyeing a ghost of a young girl crying in the corner. Part of him wanted to go ask what was wrong, but ultimately he knew it was useless trying to reason with ghosts. They were caught in a loop of time, reliving grief indefinitely in a manner that rendered them utterly beyond reason. Whatever they were during their lives or even as middlers in Ephemera was long gone. Besides, Ten was never able to get used to their dark grey auras or red, glowing eyes. He knew that the outcome for a spirit who failed to enter the afterlife was to become a ghost, and he didn’t want to gaze too deeply into that mirror yet.

            Time seemed to move slow as molasses. Ten sighed, trying to will one of the books on the floor to open to pass the time. His non-corporeal hands kept slipping straight through the book as if he were made of nothing but air. He concentrated, trying to give himself some physical form, some weight. He took a deep breath and concentrated all of his force into the palm of his hands, willing himself solid. A burning headache was starting up behind his eyes, but with effort, the cover of the book flipped open. A librarian passing by looked down at the book, rubbed her eyes, and continued walking as though her eyes had been playing tricks. Ten couldn’t help but smile triumphantly. He was starting to get better at manipulating his surroundings in the living world. Eventually he may even be able to grant himself enough form to hold a pencil and write a note to Taeyong.

            “The kid is on the move.” Hansol said suddenly, standing up and adjusting behind the shelf to avoid view. Ten followed suit, and watched as the boy sauntered out the door with an armful of rented books. “Let’s go.”

            The two spirits crept after the boy. His nose deep in a book, even while walking, he was totally oblivious. He made it way too easy for the spirits to follow him surreptitiously home. As the boy unlocked his apartment door, Ten and Hansol walked casually through the wall, and waited inside the home for his arrival.


	5. The Snake

Doyoung hated nights like these, when he was inundated with dreams. When he was alive, he’d loved dreams; the opportunity to escape the ordinary. Now though, he preferred not to dream at all. If he could choose not to require sleep, he would.  It seemed like a cruel joke that even death was not reason enough for fatigue to stop chasing you.

 

            Doyoung sat up on his cot, rubbing his eyes wearily. He’d seen her again in his sleep. His childhood friend Mina. They’d been neighbors, had been together for the entirety of their formative years. He still had memories of sitting at the playground with her as a child, sharing an ice cream cone as the summer swelter sent the chocolate running in streams over their fingers. The sun hot on their necks, her smile warm on his face. Her smile, that he’d eventually blow open with his own hands years later. She’d been bleeding at his feet, her temple punctured and weeping. And it was his fault.

 

            He wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore. Of that, Doyoung was sure. He pushed his blanket aside and stood, splashing some water on his face in the sink. When he glanced in the mirror, he was afraid of what he saw. He knew what his teammates thought of him. They liked to crack jokes about his bunny-like eyes and kind features. But when Doyoung looked in his reflection, his wide eyes looked haunted beneath their curtains of jet black hair. All he saw was a coward. A monster.

 

            Restless, Doyoung ambled his way into the training room. The headquarters was deathly quiet. Sol and Yuta were most likely sleeping, while Hansol and Ten still had not returned from the living world. Doyoung felt utterly alone, but it didn’t elude him that maybe this was exactly what he deserved. Mina had offered her continued friendship to him. And look where that got her: to a gunshot wound to the head.

 

            Doyoung plucked some of the knives off their shelves and absently began to sharpen them. Most of their weapons were in abysmal shape. They would probably be forced to head into the blackmarket soon to exchange some shards for better equipment. Some of the knives were tarnished to the point of being unable to slice hard bread, and there was nothing more important in Ephemera than being well armed.

 

            The task of sharpening was an absentminded one, and his thoughts inevitably drifted to the memory of her. Mina had always been a bright child. As toddlers, Doyoung and Mina were practically two sides of the same battery, blitzing through their parent’s homes, drawing on walls, knocking over vases. Even if she was angry, Mina’s tempers were always easy to dispel. Simply offering a piece of lemon cake or a wedge of candy was usually enough to chase away any moods. That had changed after they entered different Universities. Both Doyoung and Mina had started dating people in their respective colleges. Maybe it was the distraction of a new girlfriend that had caused Doyoung to be less attentive to his childhood friend. As her lover left her, as she discovered the beginnings of a tumor in her left breast, as she descended into a deep clinical depression that no amounts of therapy or medicine seemed to cure.

 

     Why did he never notice her lack of communication, or the cloud over her expression that had never been there before? He didn’t understand the depths of her depression until she had called him to come to her dormitory. Her voice had sounded odd, and it had terrified him. Doyoung had hurried over, and when he arrived, utterly drenched from the rain, Mina had handed him a small gun. She’d said, _I don’t think I want to live anymore._ She’d said, _You’re my best friend. You’re my only friend. I don’t think I can do this on my own, so please assist me_ **.** She’d said, _I’m ready,_ as she embraced him one last time, stepping back with her eyes serenely closed. Of course Doyoung had protested her decision. Of course he cried, and begged her to just go to the emergency room. But Mina had known him since he was an infant. She always knew how to get him to do what she wanted.

 

            So he’d aimed the gun towards her forehead, to hit her where she would die immediately and feel no pain. But the tears blurred his vision, and his hands shook with such violence that he’d missed his mark. He’d missed, and hit her in the temple. It was like a cork being loosened from a bottle of red wine. She dropped like a sandbag, but she had not died, and Doyoung immediately knew the gravity of his mistake. What a stupid thing his wish to help his loved one caused him to do.

 

            He’d run outside the dorm to the street, crying out wildly for help. It was still raining, there was very little pain. The squeal of tires and a horn blaring were the last things Doyoung remembered from his life before he woke up crumpled in Ephemera.  He knew immediately in his gut that she had not died that night. That she was the reason he was stuck in limbo. And Doyoung had been right. His bullet had not been fatal, but it had severed a vital cord in her brain and left her vegetative. During his first re-entry into the living world, he had found her hospital room and watched her. Mina with her hair shaved off, the bare skin of her temple stitched over after the remnants of open head surgery. Mina and her eyes that were open without seeing, a bit of saliva falling from the corner of her mouth. In trying to save her, Doyoung had handed her a fate worse than death. And what was he to do now? Try to pull the hospital cords and wires from her until her body failed and she died? Continue to watch over her, hoping against hope that the might pull herself out of her vegetative state? There was no right answer anymore. It was futile. He was futile. Anything unlucky enough to be loved by him turned to ash eventually. 

 

~~

 

  Taeyong growled into his pillow as he heard another lewd giggle leak through the thin walls of his makeshift room. It was four in the morning, but the steady stream of bass heavy music and talking had yet to cease. Sinewy streams of dawn were beginning to gather outside the window, and this would make the third sleepless night in a row. _I can’t handle this anymore._

 

            Fuming, he got up from the pull out couch that he had claimed as a bed, and made towards the bedroom. In the darkness, he tripped over what he could only assume was a beer can, and he kicked it away in frustration. Taeyong had always been both a neat freak and a sensitive sleeper. When he’d been living with Ten, this had never been a problem as he had been a respectful roommate. But his current living situation however…

 

            From the bedroom, came a flirtatious squeal, “Johnny!”, then more giggles.

 

            After vowing to avenge Ten’s murder with his own two hands, Taeyong had dropped out of college, given up his apartment, and pooled all of his savings to go off the grid and scour the black market for the best hitman. Through a series of proceedings in the city’s gang operated underbelly, Taeyong had secured the name and contacts of a hitman called “The Snake”. Using all of his saved money, Taeyong had sought The Snake out, moved into the dingy motel that doubled as the hitman’s headquarters, all in hopes of intensively seeking out who had killed Ten, and get his revenge. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he hired an assassin. The movies had set him up to believe he’d be in the hands of a dour but diligent person. He’d expected seriousness and icy fortitude, but The Snake was…. He was…

 

            “Johnny!” Taeyong shouted as he burst into the bedroom. His darkness worn eyes took a moment to adjust to the light. The room was awash in red mood lighting, unnecessarily loud r&b playing from the old fashioned record player on the nightstand. Taeyong didn’t see the assassin immediately, but there was a faint rustling in the corner as the large man uncoiled himself from the two women below him. The whole room reeked of soju and expensive perfume, and the women were naked and smiling, lips rouged bite red and glossy. The whole scene made Taeyong want to either run away or die, but he held his ground. “Johnny, It’s freaking almost morning. Can’t you please just turn it down for once and let a boy sleep?” Taeyong said, using the assasin’s code name. Taeyong wasn’t sure what Johnny’s real name was, only that this western name was not it. He imagined the hitman changed his name as quickly as he changed the women hanging on his arm, or the motel he set up camp in. It must have been a way to protect his identity. But Taeyong wasn’t interested in knowing his real name. He frankly didn’t give a shit what his real identity was, as long as he would be silent.

 

            Johnny regarded him with an infuriatingly jovial smile, getting up to wrap his bare waist with a linen sheet. “For someone so young, you sure are tightly wound. Come here, enjoy life with us.” The older man poured a shot of rice liquor into a glass, holding it up for Taeyong to grasp, but the younger man made no move for it. With a theatrical sigh, Johnny threw back the shot as if it were nothing but water. “This is no way to live, little sheep. You’re in your prime, you’re a good looking kid. Why let this go to waste with something so menial as sleep? Come. join us. I’m a libertine, I have no qualms with sharing my bed with another man, and Mira here likes them young and energetic.” Johnny gestured down with a dangerous sway that was truly snake-like, and Taeyong followed his hands. He was surprised to find that one of the naked women in the bed was in fact not so young at all. Though her body was firm, her face was that of a middle aged woman. Somehow the sight of the expensive pearl jewelery dangling from her limbs made Taeyong sick to his stomach. When he’d first met Johnny and moved into his motel room, he had warned about his various side jobs aside from assasinations. Taeyong got the feeling that Johnny had not bought these women at all, but the other way around.

 

            “I have no intention of joining you. I only want you to keep it down. I haven’t slept in three days, and if I’m dead on my feet, how am I supposed to…” Taeyong lowered his voice to an angry hiss so the women wouldn’t hear. “.. to kill Ten’s murderer? This is what I hired you for, remember? I didn’t squander my life savings to be joining your sexual trysts.”

 

            Johnny sighed, running a hand through his wavy, black hair.  “Just because you can’t function without sleep doesn’t mean I can’t. Shit kid, they don’t call me The Snake for nothing. I’ve already dug up some dirt. Go wait for me outside. Let me finish with these ladies and send them on their way.” Johnny placed a bottle of beer into Taeyong’s hands and pushed him towards the bedroom door with finality. The door slammed behind him, and Taeyong heard the muffled giggles and moans start up again in the room, but this time he wasn’t angry at it. What had Johnny said? That he’d already found out some vital information about Ten’s life? Could it be possible that this hedonistic man was capable of work afterall? He tore open the beer and guzzled it all in two long swigs, the anticipation suddenly drying his mouth. His stomach puckered at the unexpected onslaught of fizzy booze, but he was past the point of caring about discomfort.

 

            It seemed like hours of pacing around the motel living room had gone by before Johnny ushered the two, now fully clothed women outside of the room.

 

            “Take care Mira, Yoori. Come seek me out again if you’re feeling lonely.” Johnny gave them both a kiss and turned around without a second glance. The one named Mira fleetingly touched Taeyong’s chin with a sultry look that said Come join us next time.

 

            Taeyong shrugged away from her touch and shut the door behind them, locking it firmly. He turned around and gave Johnny an accusatory stare, which Johnny returned with a casual shrug.

 

            “Fine, I’ll try to keep my trysts limited to a reasonable hour. Happy? Christ, you are a picky client.” Johnny said, no real venom in his voice. For a hitman, he was surprisingly good natured, not stingy with the laughter or smiles, and with an unfortunate affinity for lame dad jokes.

 

            “I just don’t understand. You make so much money for just one assassination. What’s the need for these sorts of…. Side jobs?”

 

            Johnny clicked his tongue, wagging his finger mockingly. “My sheep, there is no such thing as too much money in this world. I fully plan to work hard, play hard, and retire by thirty. That way I get to travel while I’m this pretty. You know, fuck my way around the world?”

 

            Taeyong wanted desperately to roll his eyes, but he held the impulse in. Despite Johnny’s unbearable hedonism and bravado, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he was also dangerous and staying in his good graces would be paramount. “Right. So you said you had information about my friend Ten?”

 

            Johnny’s brown eyes seemed to change immediately, sharpening in focus. Gone were the lazy, entertained eyes of a hedonist. He finally looked like the professional killer he was. The sudden shift frightened Taeyong, but he tried his best to not look phased. “Come sit here.” Johnny said, pointing to the dining table chair. Outside, night was finally fully yielding to dawn, a few ethereal strands of pink and orange light streaking across the darkness. This had been Ten’s favorite time of day. When he was alive, he would rouse a begrudging Taeyong out of bed to go watch the night transition into day. With two mugs to tea in their thermos’, they would sneak onto the roof and sit in the cold, Seoul air. It felt like so long ago to Taeyong. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

 

            “How much did you know about your friend Ten?” Johnny asked, sifting some coffee grinds into the French press.

 

            Taeyong was taken aback by the question. How much did he know him? He knew that Ten was a morning person, and that trying to drag him anywhere after midnight would result in his all but having to carry him back home. He knew Ten like chocolate with an almost animal fervor. He knew Ten preferred his coffee milked and sugared. He knew he was quick to laugh, and brighter than any light. He knew his Korean was clumsy, that he had liked to draw, that his alcohol tolerance was low and he had a terrible habit of trying to hit on people when inebriated. The myriad of small facts Taeyong had collected about Ten throughout the years of their friendship swam through his head at a dizzying pace until one resonant truth surfaced above them all.

 

            He didn’t know Ten. Not really.

 

            For all the small facts and inside jokes, Taeyong knew absolutely nothing about Ten’s background, what his childhood had been like, who is family was. Ten had been talkative in any subject except himself. Taeyong’s eyes swam with unshed tears. Best friends for years, and he didn’t know one thing about Ten’s life other than paltry details. But Ten had known Taeyong. He’d taken the time to learn everything there was to know about him.

 

            _I’m a terrible, selfish friend, Ten. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you._

            If he noticed the tears, Johnny pretended not to. He continued on. “Your friend Ten was leading quite the double life.” He said, pouring two mugs of coffee, pushing one in front of Taeyong. “Firstly, his real name was not Ten. That name was false.”

 

            Taeyong felt his heart leap in his throat, a million questions racing through his head.

 

            “His real name was Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul. But he gave that name, up and changed it to Ten with a different surname as well when he came to Korea.”

 

            “But why?” Taeyong sputtered, unable to believe his ears. “What happened in Thailand?”

 

            “Apparently the kid came from an extremely rich family. I’m talking like filthy, filthy rich.” Johnny said, throwing a stash of papers onto the table. Taeyong opened the file tentatively, and gasped. It was a photo of a little boy, unmistakably Ten, and what seemed to be his parents. That familiar smile that was recognizable even in a baby picture sent waves of warmth through Taeyong’s heart, but what was really striking was the background. Ten’s family was posing resting in front of the most lavish mansion Taeyong had ever laid eyes on. It looked like a museum with its sloping spires and intricate awnings. Taeyong imagined a small army could live in that mansion.

 

            “Fuck…” He whispered under his breath. It was all he could manage. How had a boy of this magnificent wealth ended up in their dingy, two bedroom apartment? Even so, Ten had never complained. Taeyong would never have known him to be a wealthy person, with how undyingly humble he had been.

 

            “I know.” Johnny said. “But it gets more complicated. Turns out the Leechaiyapornkul family is wealthy because they are high ranking members of a very powerful Thai gang, the kind of mafia that has their hands in every aspect of the country, you know? Everything from commerce to the government. Your friend, let’s just continue to call him Ten for convenience’s sake, decided he wanted nothing to do with the gang life. He’d seen one too many instances of violence, and he wanted out. So he changed his name, cut all ties, and immigrated to Korea under the guise of a student. I’m guessing, he was hoping for a fresh start.”

 

            Taeyong gulped, leafing through more of the pictures. In the photos, toddler Ten looked happy. Despite knowing they were involved in the mafia, his parents looked loving in the photographs, so why? Taeyong’s heart suddenly seized. What if Ten had been murdered by his own parents for trying to escape his duties? That would have been too cruel… too cruel.

 

            “Ten’s mother took ill, and passed away shortly after, though as Ten had cut off all of his ties in hopes of going off the grid, it’s likely he never learned of his mother’s passing.” Johnny continued, and his finger moved to point at Ten’s father’s photograph. “And the father died a few years later as well, for unknown reasons. Not sure how, but I think all evidence points to murder.”

 

            “Who could just kill a high ranking gangster so easily?” Taeyong asked, though an answer was already forming in his head.

 

            “Another member of the gang, of course. See, Ten’s father must have been pretty broken up about his Son’s disappearance. He wrote on his will that all of his assets, if something were to happen to him, was to be inherited by his son and only his son. The will also specifies that if Ten is not found, the money is to be donated entirely to charity. Now Ten’s remaining family members, namely his uncles and cousins seemed to be rather hell bent on finding Ten so he could legally inherit the money. That way, the assets wouldn’t all be donated to charity. And once the assets passed through Ten’s hands, his distant relatives planned to…”

 

            Taeyong clasped his hand over his mouth. His hand was shaking. “He was murdered for his inheritance.”

 

            “Correct.” Johnny said, pulling out a family photograph. Ten’s extended family was huge and obviously lavishly wealthy. Ten was about ten years old in the picture, standing in the corner with his mother and father. But his countenance in this photo was strikingly different from the photos of his childhood in which he was like a beam of light. Here, surrounded by his richly dressed cousins and aunts and uncles, young Ten wore misery like a scarf. What unspeakable horrors had he witnessed to have such a change in countenance? “Ten’s father was most likely trying to help him when he added those stipulations to his will. But it ended up being Ten’s death sentence. If the wealth could be inherited by whoever was next in line even if Ten was never found, there never would have been any reason to hunt him down. There would have been no need for a funeral.”

 

            Johnny tapped the photograph, and Taeyong peered down at where his finger was pointing. A sneering, middle aged man was standing a row behind young Ten. “That was Ten’s first uncle.” Johnny said. “I’m gathering that he was probably the one to order the hit on Ten, because he would logically be next in line to inherit the money.”

 

            Hatred, black and poisonous seeped through Taeyong’s bones. He stared at the weathered face in the photograph, the uncle with his thick facial hair and lupine eyes. He hated him. He couldn’t remember hating anything more.

 

            “Now what?” Taeyong asked after a moment, his voice completely deadpan.

 

            “What?”

 

            “You bring me all of this information. So great. Now I know that my best friend, who gave the least shits about material possessions was killed because a matter of money. Now what do you suggest we do about it? How do we bring the fucker down?”

 

            Johnny took another sip of his coffee and leaned back, appraising Taeyon thoughtfully. The boy had fire that would leave a pyre jealous. How entertaining. Johnny hated boredom more than anything, and he started to realize that with this kid around, he would never be bored.

 

            “Bold words, kid. The problem is, it’s not like we can just fly over to Thailand and call a hit. This man has a whole legion of mafia members backing him, we’d be at a severe disadvantage.”

 

            “Then what else can we do?”

 

            Johnny smiled his lazy smile, leaning close to the younger man’s face. “Don’t despair, friend. We’re far from out of options. Ten’s uncle contacted the embassy in Korea to let them know how he just found out his dear nephew had snuck off to Korea several years back and got himself shot up. My friend at the embassy says the bastard put on a good show, shed some fake sobs over the phone and everything. Sickening. But anyway, he’s coming over in a month to claim Ten’s ashes and take them back to Thailand, he needs to keep up the guise of loving and bereaved Uncle, after all.”

 

            Taeyong felt a smile carving his face into a cruel mask. “And when he comes to Korea…”

 

            Johnny was also smiling, insidious and toxic, like a cobra poised to strike. With an almost sensual flourish, he positioned his fingers as if they were the barrel of a gun, placed them gently at his own head, pretended to shoot. Johnny collapsed into a wild, animal laughter, and Taeyong could not, could not help but join as the insanity of his decisions finally became clear in his head. Oh, he was crazy. He was crazy for pursuing this revenge. But when he thought of his friend lying barely alive on their kitchen floor, about to die at age twenty at the hands of his uncle, Taeyong was filled with a maniacal glee at the possibility of ripping the man’s face off.

 

            Taeyong’s heart had always been capable of boundless amounts of love, but with it, came the boundless capacity of rage. And today, he felt the rage run over like an overfilled chalice. Some maniacal hunger for violence mounted within him. He was sick, he was sick, and he liked it. Grabbing a butter knife from the table, Taeyong raised it above his head and struck the picture of Ten’s uncle, piercing it straight through the eye. 


End file.
